This little school journal was from 1978, containing the precious and humorous thoughts of a seven-year-old boy. I found this particular page quite funny. It says,

“Dr. Glasglow showed us a slideshow. When children are 7 they lose their teeth. I should always brush my teeth”.

A few of the sketchbooks and diaries contained glued-in objects, keepsakes, recipes, and photos. Some items were collected for sources of inspiration and others were keepsakes from personal life events. The page above is from Lisa Cinar’s diary. She humorously stapled an old nose ring to the side of a page, as “a reminder of man’s cruelty”.

The page above is from Rebecca Dolen’s sketchbook. This book contained creative and humorous illustrations, mini-stories and ideas for projects. Some of the books and cards at the Regional Assembly of Text can be traced back to the pages of this sketchbook. It was fun to get a look into her creative process.

“Bringing to my attention” is a page from Allison Chamber’s sketchbook. This one scan doesn’t do justice to the dozens of beautiful paintings, portraits and bits of text that were in there. The pages in her book were thick and heavy, so that they could be painted on without any tearing or curling.

Owen Plummer’s sketchbook contained dozens of intricate black ink drawings, like the one above. Owen’s invented creatures and designs are all unique from each other, and yet treated with the same energy and attention to composition, detail and line quality. As a result, I found his sketchbook to be quite captivating.

This is only a small sampling of many great findings in the sketchbook show. Thanks to all the individuals who participated in the show!

We receive so many beautiful donations wrapped up in wonderful mail art that we decided to

make a show of the books with their wrappings. Come check it out!

Recently arrived is a package from Kevin Nickerson who has donated a beautiful selection of Mail Art from his own collection. World Art Post is a stunningly beautiful  catalogue of artist’s stamps and stamp images from all over the world. Published by Artpool in Budapest. There is no publication date to be found but one essay is dated 1982.  I suspect this book is at least 25 years old.  Each page of stamps is offset printed in a different colour. Kevin also sent a number of other Mail Art items. Come and hunt for them in the reading room!

Melanie Coles’ zine, Peggy Marshall’s Bat Brew and Mystic Pizza,is a tour-de-force piece of photocopy/collage art. The image above is part of the accordion-fold cover.

Laura Kenins sent us a number of  volumes of her comics Tales of Modern Tragedy and Birch Control. The image above is of the cover Laura printed on the letterpress at the Dawson Printshop.  We have Tales of Modern Tragedy volumes 1, 3, and 4 as well as Birch Control volumes 1 and 2 and a single copy of Russian Roulette.

From Lindsay at pit.of.ennui we’ve received two new zines. This fascinating cover wraps around a story of  women, the land and animals, and relationships. A great deal of content packed into 20 pages.

A, is a small book with screen print cover and inside black and red screen print pages by T. Doran. There are three books by Doran in the reading room collection, all screen printed and all beautiful and mysterious.

One of two new books by UK artist, Stephen Fowler. Black and white portraits drawn in pen and ink. Inspirational work!

Canadian Artist Jonathan Wolferstan has sent us Map and Memory, nine short pieces about memory illustrated with details of maps from Canada, France and the U.S. Which came first? The map or the memory? For instance, the map that illustrates a memory of Bowen Island, BC is illustrated with a map from Ransgate UK. A lovely little book well worth looking for and sitting down with.

Node Pajomo is a “node in the network”, published in Bellingham, Washington that lists international mail art projects you can submit work to. Also lists mail art exchange projects, tape traders, artists stamp info, distros and zines looking for your submissions. An excellent pocket-size reference.

Three new visual poetry chapbooks by Reed Altemus’ press, Toner Works. These are beautiful publications! Be sure to look for them in the reading room the next time you’re visiting.

Alfonso de Anda has written and drawn this zine El gran ataque, a book of urban pirates with “no course and no mission”.

Thanks to everyone who has sent us their books and zines. These scans are just a quick survey of the wonderful things that arrive in our mail!

We’ve received some wonderful publications recently from Reed Altemus of Toner Works in Portland, ME.  A rich collection of collaborative visual poetry including the three chapbooks above. Altemus has donated a wide ranging selection of work he’s published and we’re very pleased to have his publications in our collection.

Anchor Archive is housed at the Roberts Street Social Centre in Halifax. I visited the Centre on a sunny Sunday afternoon in February. Every Sunday, Amanda and Zak, two librarians who are working on cataloguing the 2000+ books in the collection, can be found sitting on the couch hard at work on their computers. They have kept a blog about the process of creating the catalogue at http://blog.anchorarchive.ath.cx/. Sarah Evans, one of the founders of the library is at work reshelving returned zines.

We’ve received some wonderful new material in the reading room over the past few months: Six issues of Illusory Self by Jack Bride, http://www.johnbride.com, and a new package of zines and other great material (including posters and this postcard by Sarah Evans) from Anchor Archive. There are books made during last year’s 24 Hour Zine Challenge: 10 words that I wish you wouldn’t say by Kaley, Why I like to Pee Outside by Amanda Stevens, and Botanical Hairstyles by Sonja Edworthy (see Zines Found and Received, Sept 11, 2008). Another from Anchor Archive is a two volume book bound into one book: Messy Baby by Julia Hartley and Messy Dog by Sarah Evans. The book has pages of recipes for healthy meals for both dogs and babies organized in alphabetical order. The 24 Hour Zine Challenge was an occasion to make a collaborative zine about the day’s activities that included a celebration of Anchor Archive’s third anniversary.  Congratulations!  Drift by Dustin was made during the day too. It’s a collection of hand drawn psychological maps of Halifax as seen or remembered-possibly in a dream.

Also new to the reading room are issues 1, 2, and 3 in the first volume of Y2K Compatible by Robert Dayton. Robert has moved from Vancouver to Toronto and we are happy he is staying in touch and sending his work – which is always a pleasure to receive.

Several copies of Show me the Money! have come to us from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. It’s a great DIY zine with articles about the economy and Utopian thought and The Winter/Spring 2009 issue includes a $10,000 forged U.S.bill displaying Dwight D. Eisenhower’s face. Very nice addition!

Donato Mancini’s new zine, FREE, is proof of his (currently) being worth 58 free coffees. Mancini has been collecting Bean Around the World cards since 2004. He displays the cards in this zine where we can see that on only three occasions has he weakend and claimed his free coffees.  If you’re broke and in need of a coffee try to find Mancini and maybe he’ll lend you one of these cards.

Two volumes of The Adventures of Matthew have stories, maps, and traveling tips. Thailand/Cambodia is a double volume that can be read front to back or back to front.

A mysterious little zine about Lististics has appeared. There is no author’s name on it but it’s a swell zine.  Jeff Miller in Montreal sent us Issue No. One of Negative Capability. Negative Capability defined by Keats is the state when “man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.

We have two volumes of Rain, Radical Art in Nature magazine published in Vancouver. These volumes both have hand made art pasted into the pages. The whole production is made with a great deal of care. You can email Rain at rainzine@gmail.com to find out how where to pick up a copy.

Aaron Fitzpatrick from Hamilton, Ontario sent us Volume 1 of The Progressive Thinker. This is the debut publication from Leaf House Press and “features commentaries on the state of western society. The Progressive Thinker presents viewpoints from alternative perspectives not touched on in the mainstream media”.

And last but not least! A tiny book by Kelly titled My Good Fortune, a collection of  her fortune cookie fortnues from the past five or six years. Wow! I counted over 60 little strips of fortunes in this zine.

The Russian zines and Estonian artists books exhibition has closed and while I was putting books away and setting up a new display from the collection I discovered two books of poetry I hadn’t seen before.

th emerald dreems uv port colborne ontario by bill bissett was published Warren Dean Fulton’s Pooka Press in 1999. It was great to find this chapbook in the collection. Thanks to whoever donated it.

The copy of Force Movements by Nelson Ball is the 2nd edition “slightly revised”. The first edition was published by bp nichol’s Ganglia Press in Toronto in 1969. Thanks to whoever donated this book. Stand up and take credit. There is a great deal of Canadian publishing history embodied in these two chapbooks.

Recently added to the collection are two zines from Halifax that were made during the 24 Hour Zine Challenge hosted by Anchor Archive. You can read all about the 24Hour Zine Thing here: www.http://24hourzines.com

This is a project where participants make a 24 page zine from the start to the finished printed copy in 24 hours. No stopping, No sleeping! The idea is to not have any ideas until the day you sit down to work. I made a 24 hour zine last year. It was great fun and wonderfully exhilarating to spend such a concentrated time working on a book. It was also exhausting. I thought of doing it again this year but that’s as far as I got.

How I Got Over my Fear of Spiders is by Amanda Stevens. Educate Yourself about Botanical Hairstyles is by Sonia Edworthy. Both women (of great stamina) should be congratulated on finishing their projects.

Also briefly noted in New Contributions is issue #1 of Enthusiasm a free zine by Susie and Tim from Norwich, England and a small poetry chapbook by Edwin.

For those of you who were at the gala third anniversary party for the Regional Assembly of Text (where the lowercase reading room makes its home) you will remember the cake to end all cakes by Allison Chambers. For those who couldn’t come to the party, here are some pictures now.

The exhibition Russian Zines and Estonian Artists’ Books is a selection of some of the new books in the collection of Jo Cook and Wesley Mulvin. The following blog entry written by Cook is a short introduction to some of the books you can find in the lowercase reading room during the month of August.

Just across the street from the Moscovski Railway Station in St Petersburg is the Contemporary Arts and Culture Centre, The Pushkinskaya 10. The three-story centre is a warren of halls, stairwells, outdoor courtyards and doors with hand-lettered signs in Cyrillic that say John Lennon’s Temple, Fish Fabrique Club, The Museum of Non-conformist Art and the door to the “Kultprosvet” Information Bureau & Book Club, an intimate bookstore well-stocked with local publishers’ books on art and culture along with a good selection of St Petersburg underground publications.

The books we are showing at the lowercase reading room for the month of August are zines and comics by St Petersburg artists. There are half a dozen volumes of Van Gogh’s Ear, a quarterly photocopied zine with a different theme for each issue, usually with hand-painted covers.

Two pages from the Book of Dead Poets, Thirteen Poets Destroyed by Their Own Country. Published in an edition of 100 copies.

Wild Division, by Grigory Katsnelson. Published in an edition of 50 copies in blue ink on newsprint.

There are small press books about anatomy and other subjects and a wonderful box filled with sheets of drawings on recycled brown paper. These drawings are not only beautiful but funny too – even if you can’t read Cyrillic. You can find out more about the Pushkinskaya 10 here: http://p10.nonmuseum.ru and the link to Gavril Lunin’s website is here: http://www.lubnin.pp.ru/ and link to the artist who publishes Van Gogh’s Ear is here: http://www.girsh4.narod.ru

Another beautiful set of books by Dimitri Prigov (5 November 1940- 16 July 2007) is the box of 13 mini-books published by Stop Over Press in 1996. You can read an interview with Prigov by Philip Metres here: http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/2007/07/ends-of-russian-poetry-interview-with.html

The Estonian artists’ books in this exhibition are a diverse cross-section of publications that we collected randomly or were given to us as gifts by other artists when we were in Tallinn, Estonia at an artists’ residency.

Rääkivad Majad, Speaking Houses by Mark Adam and Marko Mäetamm is a bilingual edition of 10 stories that are profoundly dark and disturbing. Hand bound in an edition of 200 by Lennart Mänd who teaches book binding at the Estonian Art Academy, this book is a typically stunning example of the unparralled craftsmanship in Estonian artists’ books. Published by Royal Incest Books of Pain.

A Complete Guide to Estonian Bus Stops by Eve Kask and Signe Kivi is a two inch thick book with photographs of the1545 bus shelters in Estonia. The two women spent three years traveling 13,000 kilometers along Estonian roads documenting the unique and diverse architectural structures that serve as shelters for waiting bus passengers.

Eesti ’00 aastate autorikoomiks is a catalogue for a traveling exhibition of graphic narratives published by the Estonian Arts Academy. Check out this link to work in the exhibition here: http://www.hot.ee/koomiks

Please join us for the opening of this exhibition. The opening is from 3:00 to 5:00 pm on Sunday August 3rd. Jo Cook will be there to answer any questions. Please join us or visit the reading room any day of the week. We are open daily from noon to 5:00 pm.